Replying to Avatar DefiantDandelion

I’ll take the claim on directly. If our actions are predetermined do our actions hold significance?

*Significance* doesn’t have a meaning outside of the observer. Significant to whom. Already your actions are fairly insignificant to me. I don’t know you or your family, your successes and failures don’t sway me emotionally. They don’t motivate me. They are insignificant. Predetermined or not they are already insignificant, why would whether they are predetermined or not sway significance in any direction further.

Saying it is predetermined is akin to saying the past and the future have been played out already, simultaneously with the creation of the universe. But it doesn’t follow that when it all played out simultaneously that I didn’t have significance. It’s just that our observation of the universe happens in one direction so I won’t observe what my will *will* be until I get to that point in time. But it doesn’t steal my significance from me. I’m still a creature in the universe with the history I have, evolved to this point. desires, wants, plans, etc. so when I carry out my actions they are significant to me. They motivate me, etc.

As a creature in space and time my actions remain significant to me and any observer that cares to know my life.

The modifier of “real” before significance in your question, means important or significant. So this just breaks into significant significance which is either repeated word without a distinction to the meaning without it, or their must be some observer whois if my life is significant to them, then it is *really* significant, not your run of the mill significance. If god exists then ones life is only really significant if the god has an interest in your actions. If no god exists I can’t make the phrase “real significance” have any different meaning as “significance” alone. In which case the significance of the actions is still held by the observer, still primarily themselves.

You do not choose whether my success matters or not to your life. That is the issue.

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Sounds like what you mean to ask is “if your actions are predetermined, do you have free will”

Does an action *doer* have free will when they do the action, when the action is predetermined.

I’ll keep it short and say perhaps it is a paradox but paradoxes may only have the appearance of contradiction because they are lacking an insight.

If all past and future is played out simultaneously perhaps there is no problem with a will created within an event simultaneously impacting the direction of that event freely across space and time. Perhaps the free will is not the contradiction, only the narrative told from beginning to end is a particular perspective.

I'm getting a tattoo. This is the most painful comment I’ve ever read.

Let me put it like this. Zeno had a paradox where he argued all motion was impossible. You can look it up for the reference. But it was a paradox because fundamentally he predated calculus.

“When the Eleatic philosopher Zeno denied the existence of motion, his adversary is said to have responded by simply standing up and walking around.”

Maybe there is an understanding we still don’t have to fully explain a proof for why free will exists, nonetheless I will walk about the stage of my life. Feel free to sit in a puddle instead. 😀

can you choose to not hate someone?

I don’t have a lot of personal experience In hating or not hating someone. Hate seems pretty extreme to me, none the less, or perhaps because of that, Yes I believe you can choose not to hate someone. More to my personal experiences that I have had, I believe you can choose to love someone. And more directly if ever in a relationship for a long enough time there will be occasions where you will have to *choose* to love them in order for the relationship to last. The love chemicals eventually wear off, or there is a testing, A rough patch. I’m not saying you should always choose it with everyone, with some people choosing to love them will be bad for you as they are toxic, manipulative, and hurtful. But it is a core belief that love is a choice. And with all other decisions as well, Otherwise you will be tossed to the winds in terms of the direction of your life by your emotions.

I would leave it open that I don’t think emotions themselves are choices. But I don’t think hate or love is an emotion. Anger is an emotion, and joy, but what you do with them are choices. I have lived those choices.

the reaction is not a choice!

If it was, I would know!

This seems very impossible! Not to hate someone is something totally impossible !